(on haikus: or, the truth about bryan)

The move to Ohio was abrupt. Early winter, in fact. A lily of the valley, saved since my great-grandmother’s funeral, died of hypothermia – or whatever the plant equivalent is. It didn’t die alone. The palm followed a few months later.

We marched like Napoleon’s men into what will be, after the revolution, our North American equivalent of Poland. Flat. Dense. Easily conquered – in the right season. The right season being precisely when?

The wooden stairs creaked under the winter weight of sofa/chair/bed/table/books/cds/etc. Light snow fell. The sky, if one can call Ohio’s gray ceiling a sky, made “oppressive” a step in the right direction.

I continued to write – in fits, granted.

Remember, dear reader, that, as an earnest young man, I scribbled like Jack typed – mad and drunk and devoid of editing.

Editing? Please.

Would Pollack edit the sea?

Would Rilke edit the lover?

Would god edit the gospels?

(Two out of three, I suppose.)

Yes, I continued to write. And when I couldn’t write, I edited. All those brilliant young missives, brimming with (dis)pleasure, soon deconstructed.

There was the poem I wrote the first time it snowed during my Birmingham days. Crisp snow-smell, muffled valley-sound perfectly recaptured.

The songs. Little Man. Drift Away. Nicotine. Each more original than the other (if by “original” you mean monstrously derivative).

The first poem that, gasp, dared use the almighty “f” word. I still remember the line, “break your fucking strings.”

My first, and only, attempt at a novel, entitled “Religion is a Good Thing.” Its not.

I became an editor. That is what grad school does, dear reader. It turns the linguistically ok into the verbally eh.

Moved again. It was, after all, a yearly ritual. And, in a fit of depression, threw it all away. The notebooks. The disks. The files. The notes. Everything.

I have since rediscovered a few stray shards. But never found it within myself to start over. My writing was messy and strange and directionless and absurd and beautiful and self-indulgent and young.

I’ve lost all those things.

Hence the haiku. It is measured. The rules are clear. Beauty comes from the economy of letters, not the community of words.

The haiku. It is a small step towards what I was. What I’d like to be again.